Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Scorpion in Faery: Legends of Avalon

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Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high.

By Kristine Steimer

A long, long time ago when cats and dogs were friends, faeries and men inhabited the same space. Eventually, their relationship faded, and faeries disappeared into their magical realms to live in peace. It's that time frame where Faery: Legends of Avalon, a downloadable role-playing game from Focus Home Interactive, takes place. The "fae" realms are disappearing, and magic is disintegrating from the world for unknown reasons and you, as a faery (female) or an elf (male), are chosen to investigate the situation.

Oh hi there, we're here to save the day.

The coolest aspect of Faery: Legends of Avalon is that upgrading your skill set drastically changes the way your character looks. Instead of simply allocating points to skills or spells, you'll pick out new body parts that all have different passive or active abilities. For example, if you select the butterfly wings for your elf or faery, that allows them to use an electrical attack that normally wouldn't be available. Alternatively, you could put a cat tail on your character that increases the passive dodge ability in battles. This customization system ensures that the fae created will be unique both in substance and style.

Since branching storylines are all the rage in RPGs these days, Faery incorporates that feature. Depending on your choices throughout the game, the ending will be altered. You can also choose to be aggressive or kind to non-playable characters you meet along the way (the options are clearly marked blue or red on the conversation wheel), but the way you interact with them doesn't fill up a personality indicator. Instead, your actions will live on through your relationship with individual characters, so if you're rude with someone they may not help you out later. Of course, there are some folks that don't respect people who are too nice, so you may have to be a bit tougher depending on your conversation buddy.

The Flying Dutchman in all its creepy glory.

Companion characters also play an important role in the story. There are six people/creatures to recruit and there are romance options for both male and female characters. Each companion has their own personality, and your choices will influence their opinion of you either positively or negatively. If you disgust one of your party members enough, they'll take off.

Visually, the game looks like a watercolor-painting, and each of the four different realms you enter have a distinct style. The Flying Dutchman (a ship crewed by ghosts) is dark and dreary, with violent waves crashing along the ship's hull, while the World Tree area is bright and colorful with lots of creatures. You're constantly reminded of your small stature, especially when you fly up next to a raccoon or fennec, both of which look giant in comparison to your character. Though these furry creatures are friendly, you'll face others that are a bit more hostile.

Battles are based on a fairly standard turn-based system. Every move takes up a set number of action points and your team only has a certain amount of action points available to use, so you'll need to pick a strategy when facing tougher enemies. Also, the higher your attack level is the more intense the battle animation. Should you find yourself with the urge to kill things over and over, there are around seven dungeons spread across the different realms.

With four different worlds to explore via flight, sidequests to complete, companions to romance and dungeons to crawl, Faery: Legends of Avalon looks like it'll have a lot of content for fantasy RPG fans. The first episode will be available on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, and Steam for $15 (or 1200 Microsoft points) this November.